Friday, May 10, 2013

Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill

In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people
previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant
disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and
other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those
diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.

Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one
before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of
authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know
what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who
are respecting their authority. And when anti-authoritarians assess an
authority to be illegitimate, they challenge and resist that
authority—sometimes aggressively and sometimes passive-aggressively,
sometimes wisely and sometimes not.

Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be
in the United States. One reason could be that many natural
anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they
achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive
authorities.